Public Meeting on Hutchinson Island Private and Public Property

The Western Peninsula of South Hutchinson Island has a privately owned parcel that's vacant and a public parcel now used as the FPUA's waste water treatment plant. The waste water plant should be moved in the future, but when and for how much is a big unknown. The vacant, privately-owned parcel was the location of the Causeway Trailer Park, until the 2004 hurricanes gave the city the opportunity to close it. The City of Fort Pierce has hired a consultant to host a public meeting to allow property owners, businesses and residents to provide input into what should happen there in the future.

Editorial: Participation critical for public design workshop on South Causeway in Fort Pierce

A workshop scheduled for Saturday will lead to potential goals for prime waterfront property in Fort Pierce

By Editorial Board

Friday, March 16, 2012

After four years of discussion and a year of negotiations, a public design workshop on the future of the western peninsula of Fort Pierce Beach will be held Saturday.

Major parts of the workshop — or "charrette" — are the potential uses on the south side of the peninsula for the privately owned parcel that was formerly the Causeway Mobile Home Park and for the waste treatment plant on the Indian River Lagoon owned by the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority. Other properties to the north on the peninsula will be included in the discussion.

Residents, property owners and city and St. Lucie County officials are urged to take part in the charrette from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the River Walk Center, formerly the Fort Pierce Community Center, at 600 N. Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce.

(Yes, it's appropriate to wear green in recognition of St. Patrick's Day.)

Some of the delay in scheduling the charrette was making sure property owners, businesses and residents, including seasonal residents, would be available. There was some delay, also, in determining funding for the event and follow-up.

This will not be an inexpensive exercise. City and county officials have agreed to split the $35,000 cost, which includes the charrette and a report on consensus recommendations, as well as maps and drawings of possible uses for the properties. Facilitating the workshop will be Marcela Camblor of Stuart, a former design specialist with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. A report will be due in about three weeks.

The need to create a vision for the prime waterfront property became clear last year when Ashton DePeyster of Palm Beach, who owns the former mobile home park site, submitted plans to the state to build a marina on his property adjacent to the FPUA waste treatment plant. Residents and city officials have said they want an overall plan for the peninsula rather than piecemeal projects that could impact the overall future use. It's unlikely any of the properties can or will be developed to their full potential until the waste treatment plant is moved inland from its present site.

DePeyster and/or his representatives are expected to attend the workshop.

Leslie Olson, assistant planning director for the city who has been coordinating Saturday's charrette, said participants will be asked to develop, potentially, two sets of goals — one on their ultimate desires for the properties and one in which private investment might help financially in getting the waste treatment plant moved. The FPUA, she said, doesn't have the financial means at this time to fund the move inland.

It has been many years since Fort Pierce residents, business and property owners have had an opportunity to weigh in on the future of the western peninsula of the island. Officials have suggested such goals as a resort hotel and a convention center.

Considering the cost of this public design workshop and its role in developing a plan for the eventual use of the sites in connection with public and private partnerships, major participation from those with an interest in their future can be critical.

A few hours of discussion and drawing maps and buildings will likely have a significant impact.

editorial board

PUBLIC DESIGN WORKSHOP

Reason: To establish goals for waterfront properties on the western peninsula of Fort Pierce Beach

Date: Saturday, March 17

Time: 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Participants may drop in and do not have to attend the entire session.)

Location: River Walk Center, 600 N. Indian River Drive, Fort Pierce

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/mar/16/editorial-participation-critical-for-public-on/

Educating Recor

The commission approved city manager Recor's travel request for $6,000 to attend a two week seminar in Charlottesville, VA on the consent agenda February 6, 2012. The Commission should have aired his request, as well as Perona's, but did nothing but silently approve it.

Our view

No justifying Recor trip

■ Commissioners should not have OK’d city manager’s management course

An argument could be made to justify the expenditure of $2,500 in taxpayer money to send Fort Pierce Commissioner Tom Perona to the four-day American Public Power Association conference in Seattle in June.

Perona is the Fort Pierce Commission’s liaison with Florida Municipal Power Agency, the city’s electric utility provider. He previously attended association conferences as a board member of the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority.

Perona said sharing ideas with policy makers and utility professionals from across the nation at the conference will give the city “a perspective outside ourown littlefishbowl andkeepsus in linewith the latest utility trends, systems and solutions.”

Information obtained by the city commissioner could be of assistance to his fellow commissioners as they deal with utility system issues.

The $2,500 authorized for the trip by his fellow commissioners includes registration, airfare, hotel, mileage, parking and meals. Perona said he plans to pay 25 percent of the total cost.

Still, Seattle is a pretty long distance to travel to get whatever information is obtained.

Meanwhile, the approval by the Fort Pierce Commission to spend $6,000 to send City Manager David Recor to a two-week management course at the University of Virginia in July can in no way be justified.

And, that may not be the only cost to the taxpayers. The $6,000 to attend the Senior Executive Institute at the Darden School of Business includes registration, lodging, weekday meals and instruction material. It does not cover travel or weekend meals. Recor said he plans to pay for those items through his departmental travel and education budget, which does not require approval from commissioners. His total travel and education budget is $8,000.

Recor justified his attendance at the conference saying, “As the (city) continues to provide quality services with fewer and fewer resources, I hope to return with new tools and ideas to help craft a healthy, flexible, continuously improving, learning government organization and to be prepared to interact effectively and collaborate with our citizenry.”

It’s not just the cost of the course that’s galling, it’s the timing.

Recor has made no secret of his desire to leave the city manager’s position. Even now he’s being considered for a similar job inBoyntonBeach. And it was just a few months ago that Recor survived on a 3-2 vote a proposal to terminate his employment with the city of Fort Pierce.

Attending the management course in Virginia may look good on Recor’s resume, but would seem to do very little for the taxpayers footing the bill, especially if he leaves the city.

The public and city commissioners should demand that Recor reimburse the city for his trip to Virginia if he leaves city employment within two years. Otherwise, the money has been wasted.

And the fact that commissioners approved Recor’s application and expenses for the course indicates a lack of sensitivity to public opinion about the frugal use of taxpayer money, especially at a time the city (and its manager) is pleading poverty over declining property tax revenues.

FPUA-CFP Agree on Increased Transfer Method

I attended the joint meeting of the FPUA and the City of Fort Pierce Commission, where they worked their way to agreement on an increase in the transfer from the utility to the city. The compromise will probably add a little over a million each year to city coffers. UA Board member Mike Perri expressed his misgivings about possible rate increases in the future. While UA Director, Bill Thiess, said he thought they could increase the transfer in the next five years without increases, he also said planned decreases in the electric rate would probably not happen. The utility already has planned increases in water and waste water rates and the power cost adjustment is a fluctuating rate. The utility also won the ability to adjust rates based on the public service commission's deflator index, a kind of consumer price index for utilities. Commissioner Sessions objected strongly to the utility's proposal to advance monies in 2012, because of the expectation of payback from the city. Sessions said he felt like he was borrowing and paying back what was rightfully the city's money. Commissioner Becht has pushed for the increased transfer because he said it's fair to the utility and the city.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/oct/31/fort-pierce-utilities-officials-agree-to-pass/

Fort Pierce, utilities officials agree to new method of annual transfer

By Laurie Blandford laurie.blandford@scripps.com 772-409-1328

Originally published 06:12 p.m., October 31, 2011
Updated 07:54 p.m., October 31, 2011

FORT PIERCE — City and Fort Pierce Utilities Authority officials agreed they didn't want to increase electric rates as they proceed with a new method in calculating the amount of money the authority annually transfers to the city.

The City Commission and authority board met for a Monday afternoon workshop and agreed to move a large amount of the power cost adjustment into the rate part of electric bills. Officials said the adjustment is a pass-through cost to the authority's power provider, Florida Municipal Power Agency, to cover the fluctuating price of fuel.

The commission and board still have to give final approval to the new method at their next meetings.

Each year, the city receives 6 percent of the authority's total revenue. It received nearly $5 million last year.

But the adjustment hasn't been included in the transfer since 1994.

City officials wanted to include the adjustment in the total revenue so the city would receive an extra $1.5 million annually and help balance about $6 million in future budget deficits.

Authority officials came up with a compromise.

Residents' electric bills consist of two parts: the rate and the adjustment. The rate consists of the base rate to run the utility at $42.32 per 1,000 kilowatt hours and the base power cost at $49.52 per 1,000 kilowatt hours. The adjustment is $35 per 1,000 kilowatt hours.

Authority officials proposed moving $30 from the adjustment to the rate, which would give the city about an extra $1 million annually.

Authority Director Bill Thiess said the extra transfer would be done without a rate increase to residents, but it lessens the authority's ability to decrease rates in the future.

Instead of increasing residents' rates, the authority would make up the extra money going to the city by eliminating a rate decrease planned for next year.

But board member Michael Perri said Monday officials were making "a big mistake" and suggested instead raising the percentage annually transferred to the city.

"You can't convince me that down the road it won't affect the ratepayers," Perri said. "This is stealing from them."

Since the city won't see any of the extra money until 2013, officials agreed to set up the option for the city to borrow from the authority's $1.25 million in reserves next year if needed.

Still, officials must get approval from the authority's bondholders, which are two insurance companies, to change the way the annual distributions are calculated.

Thiess said he planned to send the proposed new method Tuesday to the authority's bond counsel.

FPUA and CFP Police Department

The FPUA agreed to move $30 of the Power Cost Adjustment (PCA) into the base power cost, thereby increasing the transfer from the utility to the CFP by an estimated $1.5 million. While electric rates may not be immediately increased, there may not be planned decreases. Already planned are increases in gas and water and waste water rates. The FPUA agreed to use the public service commission deflator index for future rate levels. The PCA, which is $35 as of October 1, 2011, will still be a fluctuating part of what's billed to the customer. http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/oct/04/fpuas-new-method-of-transferring-funds-to-city/

CFP Police Department will add five police officers, whose salaries and benefits will be paid for three years by a federal grant, while the fourth year must be paid by taxpayers. Nine other officers are already paid from federal grant monies. Chief Sean Baldwin says there is an increase in robberies, burglaries, and gang-related shootings this year.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/oct/04/federal-grant-will-pay-for-five-fort-pierce/

CFP and the increased FPUA Transfer

The CFP's attempt to increase the transfer from the FPUA may not increase rates immediately, but planned decreases will not happen. Any way you slice it, the increased transfer comes from the ratepayer, and the City of Fort Pierce is changing the way the transfer has been calculated for for the last 17 years.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/29/fort-pierce-fpua-agreement-unlikely-to-result-in/

Anthony Westbury on the CFP and FPUA

Anthony Westbury: Fort Pierce, FPUA need to talk more, build trust

Staff Reports

Originally published 05:36 p.m., September 21, 2011
Updated 05:36 p.m., September 21, 2011

Polite but dysfunctional.

Rather like family members who don't talk to each other unless they absolutely have to, the Fort Pierce City Commission and Fort Pierce Utilities Authority haven't been exactly close for a while. In fact, I can't detect much cooperation between two organizations that should be joined at the hip.

Mutual mistrust has been simmering for a year or more since the city accused the FPUA of holding back some of its annual transfer payment. After months of argument, the two entities reached a settlement where the FPUA paid $200,000 to the city. The experience seems to have left a bad taste in mouths on both sides.

A month ago, I wrote about the latest salvo the city lobbed in the utility's direction.

Apparently, the $4.9 million annual payment the FPUA makes to the city is not enough for some at City Hall. Under the terms of the city charter, the city is entitled to 6 percent of the gross revenues generated by the FPUA.

City Manager David Recor and Finance Director Gloria Johnson, however, have decided that power cost adjustment payments (which reflect the ever-changing price of fuel to generate electricity) should also be subject to the 6 percent rule. Gaining that extra few percent would add $1.5 million to the city's bottom line for fiscal year 2012.

The FPUA has always maintained the PCA is a "pass-through" charge; it does make any profits on it, so why should it be "taxed" on it?

However, Recor and City Attorney Rob Schwerer claim the city is being shorted. Schwerer is also of the opinion that some "tweaking" of the language of the city charter is all that's needed to make the changes without a formal voter referendum.

Not so, according to FPUA's attorney Rupert Koblegard. He's convinced the proposed change would require a public vote.

Should it come to that, it's no slam-dunk the electorate would say yes. Koblegard at a FPUA board meeting this week raised the possibility the city could be faced with a class-action lawsuit if the deal results in higher electricity rates.

The city came up with its plan at a hastily organized morning meeting a few weeks back. It was so sudden, the FPUA board hasn't had time to fully discuss the issue, so the utility will hold a public workshop next week to examine its options.

Neither side is entirely blameless in all this.

The city, faced with a budget shortfall, seems to be looking to the FPUA like a rich uncle who can bale it out. Some city officials have long felt the FPUA holds back too much money in its reserve funds. FPUA officials counter they'll need those large reserves if a hurricane strikes.

There's been criticism from some city commissioners that the utility hasn't made as many reductions in budgeting or staffing as it might have. There's a suspicion the FPUA has a lot more fat still to cut. I'd say that's also true of the city, which should be looking harder at its own finances before trying to grab someone else's money.

I hope all four city commissioners will find the time to attend next week's workshop. The mayor has to be there as an FPUA board member.

It's high time the two sides sat down and hammered this out. If they don't, it's clear who will suffer the most: the poor, beleaguered rate payers. Fort Pierce has more than its share of poor customers who cannot bear the higher electric bills this money grab might entail.

Raising rates to pay for all this could also have adverse impacts on FPUA's commercial customers, who already are saddled with higher rates than their residential counterparts. Fort Pierce has far too many empty commercial properties as it is. Let's be very careful introducing new charges that might accelerate that unfortunate trend.

We need an open forum to discuss all these ramifications. A plea to both boards: More sunshine, please.

Anthony Westbury is a columnist for Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers. This column reflects his opinion. For more on St. Lucie County topics, follow his blog at tcpalm.com/westbury. Contact him at 772-409-1320 oranthony.westbury@scripps.com.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/21/anthony-westbury-fort-pierce-fpua-need-to-talk/

FPUA September 20, 2011 Meeting

The Fort Pierce Utilities Authority discussed the City of Fort Pierce's move to increase the transfer and agreed to meet September 27, at 2 PM for a workshop on how to respond. Board member, Mike Perri, expressed serious concerns about how the increased transfer would impact the utility's ratepayers, as did Board Chairman, Darrell Drummond. FPUA Attorney Koblegard warned the FPUA Board of the possibility of a ratepayer class-action lawsuit, if the City of Fort Pierce tried to increase the transfer with a change in the charter without a referendum. The utility also agreed to increase the power cost adjustment by $1 because of the projection of increases from its power supplier,FMPA. The staff requested a $2 increase. FPUA is one of 15 companies in the FMPA All-requirements consortium.

See TC Palm for coverage of this meeting.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2011/sep/20/fort-pierce-residents-will-see-power-cost-in/

Fort Pierce residents will see power cost increase in October

By Laurie K. Blandford

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

FORT PIERCE — Residents will see a $1 power cost adjustment on their Fort Pierce Utilities Authority bills next month.

The authority's board voted 3-2 at its Tuesday meeting to increase the adjustment from $34 to $35 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours for October. The board plans to decide at its Oct. 18 meeting whether to change the adjustment again for November.

Board members Bob Summerhayes, Michael Perri and Pamela Cully voted for the $1 increase while Mayor Bob Benton and Chairman Darrell Drummond voted against it.

"I don't feel that we should wait (to increase the rate)," Cully said.

The authority's finance director, Nina Hurtubise, said staff recommended a small increase to the adjustment because of increased power cost projections for the next year from the authority's power provider, Florida Municipal Power Agency. The adjustment covers the fluctuating price of power.

Hurtubise said staff had recommended a $2 increase beginning next month. The board voted 3-2 against that amount. Perri suggested the compromise of a $1 increase.

The authority has about $2 million saved for projected power cost increases, Hurtubise said. The projected cost of power by the agency is $48.65 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours in 2012 and $43.98 per 1,000 kilowatt-hours in 2013.

The authority's director, Bill Thiess, said the agency originally needed more power when it planned to build a new unit in Kissimmee.

When the economy took a turn for the worse, the agency had less need for the extra power. However, Thiess said, the agency's cost to the contractor to get out of building the new unit would have been "enormous." So the unit was built and is now online, but has yet to meet its anticipated returns.

Therefore, the 15 entities across the state to which the agency sells power are covering the increased power costs.

Benton said the agency's investment shouldn't keep costing the authority money, which is covered by authority customers. "I don't feel like we should be bearing the brunt."

CFP Pursues Increased Transfer from FPUA

September 12....The City of Fort Pierce (CFP) Commission met today to discuss their pursuit of an increased transfer amount from the Fort Pierce Utilities Authority (FPUA). CFP City Manager told the Commission that this is simply a matter of clarification of what the transfer amount should be and asserted that the FPUA is an "enterprise fund" of the City. FPUA Director Bill Thiess told the Commission that there may not need to be an immediate rate increase, but that planned electric rate decreases would not be feasible if the increased transfer of $1.5 million occurred. The City needs increasing amounts of money to pay down their debt at an annual rate of about $5 million per year in the coming years. The increased millage rate proposal passed at the September 6 meeting was not discussed at all, but will be the subject of a September 19 and September 26 CFP commission meetings. Members of the FPUA Board attended today's meeting as guests. FPUA Board Chairman, Darrell Drummond, addressed the Commission, saying that the FPUA Board would be discussing the impact of the transfer at its next meeting, September 20, 2011 and must act in the best interests of the ratepayer.

Bottom line: Calling it a "clarification" doesn't take away the fact that the money, $5 million a year in the past, and $6.5 million a year in the future, came from the ratepayers and will come from them in the future.

Open letter to City of Fort Pierce Commission and Staff

Do not increase taxes, before you make meaningful cuts in your spending by acting on the City of Fort Pierce’s Citizens Budget Advisory Committee recommendations that will reduce the city's costs immediately and in the future:

Reduce legal costs by $250,000; Reduce health care costs; Eliminate the annual sick leave conversion bonus; Establish sickleave payout upon retirement to 620 hours (6 weeks); Establish the retirement multiplier to 2.5 for all city hall employees (except police); Cap pensions to75% of base pay, and eliminate vacation, sick and overtime amounts (exceptstate-mandated overtime inclusion); Increase the retirement age and the number of years of service required; Increase the vesting period to ten years. Reduce Commission pay and review car allowances, technology, and travel for Commissioners and employees to make sure they’re justified.

Your debt repayment goes up to $5.2million in 2014. Most of this debt is due to the 2007 Sunshine Loan that you were warned the City could not pay back; you then shifted the responsibility to the FPRA, which is now unable to pay it either. This debt payment exists because of expensive property purchases and building a city parking garage. The staff and the commission must now assume responsibility for their speculative behavior by coming up with money that does not come from the taxpayer or the ratepayer to pay your debt.